Understanding diet concept, its role, and how our nutrition choices may fullfill our needs and prevent disease

Diet is a misunderstood word. The real meaning of it is the daily food we eat and not a regimen as many believe.

If you stay healthy, then you're influencing directly, your quality of life. If you eat daily in a balanced, moderate and varied way, according to your body's need and you keep physically active, it is certain you will succeed on preserving your health. Not a small issue right?

A balanced diet means:

An adequate balance in the ingestion of carbohydrates, protein, lipids, vitamins, minerals and water. There is a great variety of food, and each type or group of food contains one or more nutrients.

In order to be able to choose from a variety of food which includes groups such as: vegetables, fruits, legumes, grains (cereals), meats, etc. Here are some important guidelines to follow:

Is good to mention here that with our current habits and lifestyle, as well as other environmental factors, many important nutrients from different foods have changed. Here is when nutritional supplements play an important role on completing our needs and even help us to prevent some diseases.

Nutritional Supplements support our diet and prevent diseases when well chosen

What are the most common issues regarding nutrition?

Have A Great Tip of Solution to Offer against Problems with Nutrition?

I made a little quest: What results most difficult for you regarding nutrition? Results were: 1)To keep a balanced diet, 2)Struggle with the schedule for the meals, 3)Not having time to prepare food, 4)Staying away from snacks, 5)Loosing weight, 6)Can't gain weight. Do you have ideas, tips or solutions you can come up with??? Pick one of this issues. Share your possible solutions or tips. You don't have to be an expert, only write with common sense. All contributions can be voted. Most voted before 31st of May, will get the book: Winning it's all in your head. By Denis Waitley.

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Can the food you eat affect your risk of developing a disease?

The answer is: Probably, but degenerative diseases far outrank infectious type, and are the leading causes of death and illness.

Degenerative diseases arise, not from simple infection, but from a mixture of three factors: Genetic predisposition, personal medical history, and lifestyle choices (how we nourish our bodies, if we smoke or not, if we exercise or not, if we abuse of a substance, etc.)

Without your awareness, your inmune system continuosly stands guard against thousands of attacks from microorganisms, free radicals, etc.

The importance of nutrition regarding inmunity involves:

1. Defficient or sometimes excessive intakes of certain vitamins and minerals are associated with impaired disease resistance.

2. The lack of a nutrient or the toxic presence of one, can impair the inmune tissues.

3. An imbalance of a nutrient might define how harmful this issue will become for inmunity. E.g. Depending on the metabolic tasks a nutrient performs, the defficiency will define how severely it will affect specific functions.

4.The risk of sickness and death is higher when the medical tests of a person indicate that inmunity is weak because of malnutrition.

The following graphic shows what would be the ideal situation for nutrition and inmunity in order to keep away disease:

Important diseases were diet plays a part are:

1. Heart disease.

2. Cancers.

3. Strokes.

4. Hypertension and hypertensive kidney disease.

If you have diabetes or could have it one day, here about Diabetic Diet

Food as an energy provider and some important measures we should know

We get energy from food. Each body has a specific need. In order to calculate de amount that is adequate for the body to work, we appeal to the unit called: calorie.

Calorie is a unit of heat, and it means the required amount needed to elevate 1°C the temperature of 1 gr of water.

The basic substances present in food that provide energy are:

1 gr of fat = 9 calories.

1 gr of carbohydrates = 4 calories.

Then for example: 25 grs of pure protein provide 25 grs x 4 cals/gr = 100 calories.

This is how we calculate the energy that is metabolically usable contained in a specific food, if we know the composition of nutrients (even if it is aproximated).

According to this general concepts, the caloric content of a meal shall be defined with the needs or objectives that we have. E.g. If you want to loose 500 gr of fat in a week, meaning 2 kgs /month you would need to reduce 3,500 calories from your diet, meaning 500 daily calories.

If you want to know how many calories your body needs daily for a healthy living, follow the link.

How to calculate your daily energy intake according to your needs and activity

How to achieve a daily diet with quality?

It is very important to know at least the basic about the different nutrients existing in food. The way you combine food in order to get all the molecules that your body needs might go accordingly to some guides like:

45-65% of your daily calories coming from carbohydrates (and preferably complex ones rather than the simple type).

20-35% coming from fats (better avoiding saturated fats and welcoming monoinsaturated and poliinsaturated types).

10-35% from protein sources (giving special attention to legumes, fish and then white meat).

This values are known as acceptable macronutrient distribution ranges.

Be an informed consumer and learn what information is important in food labels

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